30 greatest performances by actresses in dramatic leading roles
The 30 Greatest Performances by Actresses in Dramatic Leading Roles: a blog about the greatest performances by actresses.
The 30 Greatest Performances by Actresses in Dramatic Leading Roles: a blog about the greatest performances by actresses.
In 2002, Entertainment Weekly’s Owen Gleiberman published a list of the 30 Greatest Performances by Actresses in Dramatic Leading Roles. The list was later updated in 2012.
The 30 Greatest Performances by Actresses in Dramatic Leading Roles: a blog about the greatest performances by actresses.
The goal of this blog is to determine the 30 greatest performances in dramatic leading roles by actresses. Over time I will post about individual performances, and I will rank them.
This list is not a list of the best films of all time. It is also not a list of the best actresses. It is a list of the greatest performances by an actress in a dramatic leading role, as determined by me, with some commentary from my friends. This is obviously subjective, but hopefully it will be interesting!
The 30 Greatest Performances by Actresses in Dramatic Leading Roles
1. Katharine Hepburn as Evelyn in “The African Queen” (1951)
Hepburn’s performance has the perfect balance of humor and pathos to make this role a triumph. She is perfectly cast as a stiff-backed, prissy missionary who is forced by circumstances to team up with a rough and dirty boat captain (Humphrey Bogart) to transport ammunition up the Congo and destroy a German gunboat. As she develops feelings for him, her character thaws, making the final denouement between her and Bogart all the more poignant and lovely. This was Hepburn’s first Oscar win, and it was well-deserved.
2. Lauren Bacall as Marie Browning in “How to Marry a Millionaire” (1953)
It’s hard to believe that Bacall was only nineteen years old when she made this film, because she possesses such poise, grace, wit and beauty. She plays a model nearing thirty who makes a pact with two other models (Marilyn Monroe and Betty Grable) to marry rich men; all three women set out on this quest with much gusto. The men they meet are all
The 30 Greatest Performances by Actresses in Dramatic Leading Roles
The 30 Greatest Performances by Actresses in Dramatic Leading Roles
The 30 Greatest Performances by Actresses in Dramatic Leading Roles
The 30 Greatest Performances by Actresses in Dramatic Leading Roles
The 30 Greatest Performances by Actresses in Dramatic Leading Roles
The 30 Greatest Performances by Actresses in Dramatic Leading Roles
The Academy Award for Best Actress is an award presented annually by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS). It is given in honor of an actress who has delivered an outstanding performance in a leading role while working within the film industry. The award was traditionally presented by the previous year’s Best Actor winner.
The 1st Academy Awards ceremony was held in 1929 with Janet Gaynor receiving the award for her roles in 7th Heaven, Street Angel, and Sunrise. Currently, nominees are determined by single transferable vote within the actors branch of AMPAS; winners are selected by a plurality vote from the entire eligible voting members of the Academy. In the first three years of the awards, actresses were nominated as the best in their categories. At that time, all of their work during the qualifying period (as many as three films, in some cases) was listed after the award.[1] However, during the 3rd ceremony held in 1930, only one of those films was cited in each winner’s final award,[2] even though each of the acting winners had two films following their names on the ballots.[3] The following year, this system was replaced by the current system
This is a list of what I consider to be the greatest performances by actresses in dramatic leading roles. For my purposes, a “dramatic” performance is one in which the actress plays a role that involves real conflict and psychological complexity: not just love interest, or comic relief, or glamorous ornament; and a “leading” performance is one in which the actress dominates the film.
This is not a list of my favorite films, or of best-written characters for women. Some of these movies are great and some aren’t; some of these women are likable and some aren’t. I’m not trying to rank these performances based on how much I like them. The criterion here is how well the actress does her job: how fully she brings her character to life, and how vividly she conveys what it feels like to be that character.
I’ve ended up with thirty performances from thirty different actresses. That’s because there are so many great ones that it would be impossible to whittle them down to twenty or even forty. It’s also because I have an aversion to putting more than one performance by any given actress on any given list. Lists are finite, and once you start making exceptions you can justify making lots of exceptions; if you’re going to
There is no shortage of lists featuring the “greatest performances by actors in leading roles.” But this list category, which I have found to be among the most useful and enduring (and certainly the most fun) of my many years of compiling and writing about film, is one that has been largely ignored. This is despite the fact that there are so many great actresses who have given outstanding performances in film over the years.
It’s not much of a stretch to say that no actor can rise above his or her material, but it’s also true that a great actress can elevate a good script into something remarkable with her performance. In recent years, for example, we’ve seen actresses like Cate Blanchett, Meryl Streep and Marion Cotillard give such finely-nuanced performances that they were able to turn what would otherwise have been okay movies into great ones.
And then there are those actresses who give truly memorable performances in great films… those women whose work remains etched in our memories long after we’ve seen it. Some of them are icons who will always be remembered as the actors they portrayed. So many others will be remembered simply as the “greatest” because they gave such memorable performances that they set the bar for all others to follow.
And
